


carry me home

by nerdofnerds, seryphsystem (Slie)



Series: castles in the sky [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: 7 tips and tricks for cooking in complete darkness, Drabble Collection, Gen, Multi, boy sleeps for a decade; what happens next will warm your heart, heartless hate this trick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9707672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdofnerds/pseuds/nerdofnerds, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slie/pseuds/seryphsystem
Summary: they have to relearn life after waking up, after finding themselves, after everything--after Xehanort.





	1. take me back to where

When everything is all over and they've managed to patch up the worst of their wounds, everyone regroups at Yen Sid's tower. It's become the unofficial hub for Keyblade masters these days, the place where they get their missions and train each other and catch a few precious hours of rest before heading out again.

(Nevermind how much Ven hates it, how much it feels like a betrayal and someone like Yen Sid doesn't deserve this honor, doesn't deserve to be at the helm of a flock of budding Keybladers like the Master was.

He likes to stay at the courts where Riku and Terra spar with each other, curls up on a convenient ledge and lets the shadows fill the empty places in him. Sometimes Sora joins him, all sleek dark blackness and gleaming eyes, while Roxas kicks Riku's ass up and down the court and Terra laughs and harries them both. Mickey tries to join them, sometimes, but Ven just curls into himself behind Sora and lets the darkling hiss at the mouse, all teeth and fangs and hate, and eventually he goes away. 

He left Ven behind, left Aqua behind, failed her and Terra and Roxas and Riku and Sora and Ven will never ever forget that, not as long as he lives. Being light means he's honest and burning, not that he's forgiving.)

The post-battle party isn’t as celebratory as it is exhausted and relieved. Master Xehanort isn’t (wasn’t) difficult to fight because of his strength, but because he had a way of reopening old wounds with just words, letting them wound themselves and think themselves to distraction. 

Sora rips open a balloon of confetti over Riku and Kairi’s heads (proving that his sense of humor has remained intact) and escapes Riku’s swift revenge by melting into a pool of dark just before the silver boy’s champagne splashes on him. But it makes Kairi laugh and Ven dissolve into giggles from where he’s safely tucked away between Terra and Aqua. Sora has always been good at bringing light into situations like these.

Ven tucks his head under Terra’s arm and clings tight to Aqua where she’s curled into them, their own little knot of relief and safety. It’s easy to relax and watch Riku and Sora chase each other across the room, watch Lea and Roxas and Xion heckle them from their own corner and watch Kairi pretend to be uninvolved right up to where she summons water over them both. King Mickey lurks around the edges of the chaos with his two sycophants and pretends to be more welcome than he is, but everyone has grown tired of his unreliability and manipulations and they treat him with the same frigid politeness Minnie showed towards Riku when he first appeared at Disney Castle in a pillar of liquid dark.

The three of them don’t really need to discuss what they’re doing after this, not like the others. It was always a given that they’d go back home and restore the Land of Departure, even if there isn’t much of that land left to return to. 

Ven isn’t like Sora, who left parts of himself all over his and Riku and Kairi’s rooms and made them look lived-in, made them look something like home. His room is bare and empty and heartless and he knows Terra and Aqua’s are the same way. Even the trio of Lea and Roxas and Xion decorated their living spaces- Xion somehow made a curtain of seashells and was immediately accosted by Kairi and Roxas begging for one of their own, and Lea has posters of sports teams and tourist locations that no longer really exist like they did a decade ago, torn to pieces by the Heartless. 

This isn’t home for them. Maybe one day it could be, but- he doesn’t want it to be. 

Ven reaches up and lazily tugs at a strand of Terra’s hair, longer now than it used to be, getting his and Aqua’s attention instantly.

“Mm?” Even Terra is tired, now, eyes half-lidded and voice warm like summer fields and sunburnt stone. Aqua is feline grace by his side, coiled loose and ready to fight even as she’s drowsing off. 

“Can we go home?” 

It’s the question Ven’s never asked, not even in the middle of the night when the three of them huddled up together with a candle to be safe from nightmares, not even when Aqua traced their faces with trembling fingers and Terra wrapped himself around them like a living shield and Ven refused to let go of their hands for fear that they’d disappear again. 

Terra’s eyes go wide and he makes a hurt little noise, somewhere hollow in his chest, and Aqua sits up to put her hands against each of their faces and Ven curls himself into them a little harder. 

“I want to go home,” he tells them, quiet and plaintive and small, feeling the gap between  the thirteen years old he is and the twenty-something that he should be. Terra sways and buries his face in Ven’s hair almost helplessly, Aqua moving to drape over them both, and if all their eyes are wet there is no one who will blame them for it.

“Yeah,” Terra finally says, low and choked. “Let’s go home.”

 


	2. gold-lit streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the war is over, they go on adventures. Some are a little sillier than others.

"We,” Aqua says with great dignity and esteem, “are going to find a restaurant.” She doesn't really need to have her boys' arms looped through hers to drag them with her, but she does it anyway.

Terra might've muttered something along the lines of 'girls are weird' but Aqua decides to be mature and ignore it, nose in the air in her best Noble Keyblade Master impression. She also ignores the convenient way he trips a moment later, yelping and almost dragging a laughing Ven down with him. Nothing to do with her, of course. She is twenty-going-on-thirty-two years old and that means she is far above such things.

Ven is too busy giggling to escape the hair-ruffle Terra exacts in revenge, and it would've devolved into a scuffle if she didn't step between them and steer them back towards the upper streets they're headed towards.

"Boys," she sniffs, and if Kairi were here they'd be sharing a commiserating look across their rowdy partners.

"Why're we looking for a restaurant, anyway?" Ven asks, poking his head up from under Terra's arm. He does that more now, a proprietary claiming of personal space as though to remind himself they're here, they're real.

“Because it’s _Aqua_ ,” Terra says, and ducks when she tries to mess with his hair. (That’s new, too. He keeps it long enough to get in his eyes, like he needs to always see what the color is. Riku does the same thing.)

Aqua sniffs at both of them.

“Because I am _tired_ of campfire food and rations,” she says, “and we don’t have to keep moving anymore.”

“...hm.” Terra says, like it’s a new concept, and she wrinkles her nose at him.

“I’ve never been down here before,” Ven cuts in, all big eyes and quiet awe. He’s watching the town’s citizens walking past them and the carriages that occasionally rumble past, attention irresistibly drawn to their bright colors and cleanly tailored clothes. One particularly ostentatious lady has her skirt covered in glittering stars, and Ven almost stops moving before Terra manages to tug him back into place by his side.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Aqua says. “I was speaking to the princesses, and they recommended we come here if we wanted some proper food-”

“We _have_ proper food. Back at the castle.” Terra grumps, and she frowns at him.

“We’ve been on the run so long we’ve forgotten what civilization is,” she says. “So there is a restaurant here, and it serves good food, and you are going to help me find it.”

“Fine,” Terra says, and his voice is flat but Ven is gazing up at the two of them and tugging at her sleeve, and none of them have their Keyblades summoned for once, and Aqua is sure she isn’t imagining that his face is just a little bit softer.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

 _Well,_ she thinks to herself, _I guess it couldn’t last._

Aqua wasn’t joking when she told Terra that the three of them had forgotten civilization. It’s so easy to forget that their standards of good behavior don’t mesh with everyone else’s when they’re away in a war no one’s heard of and the only people they see are enemies or other Keyblade masters.

Between the three of them they’ve successfully demolished a tower of appetizers (to their waiter’s conspicuous consternation) broken a chair (by complete accident) and destroyed one (1) citizen’s good and pure reputation.

Aqua’s proud of her boys, yes. But she’s also hungry and they haven’t gotten their actual meals yet. She flags down a waitress, keeping one eye on the ruckus.

“Could we have our meals to go, please?” she asks, projecting sheepish politeness and manners and not at all dangerous Keyblade Master, honest. It would be a lot more convincing if the smallest of their group hadn’t broken a _chair._

The flustered waitress hustles off and Aqua turns her attention back to her boys, ready to intervene if she needs to- and stifles a laugh.

The scene in front of her is utterly absurd.

Ven is standing arms akimbo, seriously lecturing a poofily-dressed nobleman about things like _politeness_ and _kindness_ and _respecting others._ Terra is Looming Ominously behind him, very dramatic, practically daring the man to try to escape the righteous dressing-down he is receiving. From a thirteen-year-old. Who may or may not be twenty-six.

Their lives might be just a little bit weird.

And- yes, there goes the hapless citizen, nearly frothing at the mouth in his baffled anger. Ven isn’t so much oblivious to his captive audience as he is cheerfully ignoring his complaints. Terra, of course, is glaring the man down from even the thought of acting on them.

Terra is very intimidating. Aqua appreciates him very much.

“W-who in blazes do you think you are?!” The man finally manages to get a few words in and yeah, that’s her cue, she should probably get over there. Aqua bows politely to the frazzled waitress, accepting the boxes of food passed to her with a sweet _thank you very much_ that leaves the poor girl blushing in confusion.

(Terra will tease her for that later, if he finds out. He and Ven have a Conspiracy™ to get Aqua a date, and have not-so-subtly been trying to set her up with one of the Princesses for _months._ Kairi’s no help, and the younger princesses occasionally join in on her boys’ convoluted schemes because they think it’s “adorable.”

As Jasmine confided in her, it’s also a way for the boys to keep themselves relatively out of trouble. Aqua could do with a little more trouble instead, maybe.)

“Me?” Ven puffs up a little, trying to increase his height. “I’m-”

“Going now,” Aqua interrupts, chirping her way through the crowd, “thank you very much, please keep this lesson in mind in the future, goodbye and have a nice day!”

Their last sight of the poor man through the closing doors of the restaurant is of his beet-red face and the beautiful sight of him trying to explain himself to the restaurant security who (very wisely) didn’t want to challenge Ven or Terra, but are just fine with escorting out a single rude patron.

They stop for a moment, trading glances as the noise inside gets even louder.

“So should we-” Terra starts.

“Yeah, probably.”

“That would be a good idea.”

They book it.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Only later, when they fetch up against a convenient alley wall to catch their breath, do the boys remember all the food they left behind.

Ven pouts and Terra groans and Aqua has to laugh at them, pulling the boxes of dinner out to balance on one hand, and their escape from the restaurant turns into a giggling chase to be the first to the dinner table back home.

 


	3. enough to go by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you won't recognize me (for the light in my eyes is strange)

Ven is like a sunrise, sometimes, or a lighthouse beacon. His heart has an empty kind of luminescence that leaves him wandering the halls at night, eyes wide and fingertips light against the walls. It's the same emptiness that has him clinging to everyone he can touch, sitting in Terra's lap and sleeping against Aqua's side and sprawling over Anti like the touch makes up for something missing inside him.

(They don't talk about Vanitas. But Aqua knows how he wakes up reaching for a hand he can't hold, and Terra knows the way he soaks up shadows from the edges of his spars like a desert drinks up water.)

For all that his light is pure and free of darkness, it's not the same as Kairi and the Princesses. Their light is somehow _more_ , whole blazing suns compared to the distant star that Ven has become. They train together and he and Kairi spend evenings poring over notes and trading tips and tricks on blinding attacks and holding a pure element in your hands. Ven prefers other kinds of fighting, if he's really honest. Pure Light is like swallowing a supernova, like burning his heart out every time he breathes- but he's done that too, so it's okay, really.

Ven’s magic clears away the Heartless as cleanly and easily as Kairi’s, as any of the Princesses who brave the battlefield, but none of them can really forget the way it looks when Ven lets loose and every pillar of light he throws is matched by a river of darkness flowing inside him.

(So much shadow, going nowhere. It reminds Aqua of reading about the Styx and dark water full of forgetfulness.)

That wasn’t the worst thing about it, though, not the part that gave them nightmares. The worst thing was Ven’s smile after, while he was still full of artificial light. He looked at them like a stranger, lit up from inside like a statue, no more life than the crystal fountains that line Disney Castle’s more fragile courtyards, eyes luminous and pupil-less as they’d been in the days after his heart’s first breaking when all he knew with certainty was his name.

There will always be something about him empty and distant, always a part of his heart that’s been lost. Ven doesn’t seem to regret anything about it, not really, but Aqua wonders sometimes what the boy who was Xehanort’s apprentice would have looked like.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Terra and Riku write to each other often. Yen Sid and King Mickey side-eye them and comment on how appropriate it is that the older Keyblade Master mentor the younger, but what they don’t understand is that their relationship is nothing like that. Maybe if Ven joined their discussions more often it would be more obvious- they are the remnants of Xehanort’s apprentices, or the closest things he ever had to them.

Theirs is the old survivors’ club, the ones who know Xehanort better than anyone else ever has, ever will. Riku’s had a little more time to come to terms with it, to let the jagged obsidian of his heart smooth over into something that doesn’t cut him to hold, but Terra still wakes up frozen with the fear that he’s not alone and forgets to eat and get dressed because for so long it wasn’t him who needed to.

 

 _I talked to Cloud about it,_ Riku writes, _when we visited Olympus last week. He says its like the warriors who fight their way out of Hades after being imprisoned, or after serving long sentences there. (...) It’s not quite the same, but you should come over and talk to them sometime. They have some interesting ways of managing._

_One of them is reminding ourselves that we still have choices. It sounds kind of weird, I know, since it’s our choices that messed everything up. But it makes sense. Maybe. If you look at it sideways and kind of squint._

 

Terra’s letters are shorter, or read more like a log of events and observations than an honest attempt at communication.

 

_x/x -[Found Ven wandering around at night again. Or rather, Aqua did- I think he scared a few years off her life, but it turns out he just wanted a midnight snack.](http://99.god.jp/post/152149908197/cryptid-spotted) It’s funny as long as we don’t think too hard about how she almost took his head off. _

_x/x - We tried some new recipes today. Magic is not a good way to start an oven. (Also, Fire magic scorch marks do not disappear when you use Light magic on them. Just thought you’d like to know.)  Ven recommends one of the cookie types we tried for you and Sora and Kairi- I attached the ingredients list and instructions._

_x/x - Rough day. Can’t spar, can’t read without deja vu and looking for notes I didn’t write. Chest hurts._

_x/x - Aqua found a book relating to combat fatigue. Breathing exercises copied and attached. The third one is meant for Light meditation but works okay with shadow or Dark. Okay with Water if you’re outside. Don’t let Sora try it with Fire magic._

 

Only when they meet in person do they talk about the things they can’t write. Terra talks about dreams of memories that aren’t his, of finding old journals of his where he dreamed everything that was yet to come. Riku admits to the prophetic drawings that still line the walls of the Secret Place, and seeing the Door and hearing whispers long before anything ever happened.

Only by themselves do they dare to ask- _what could we have done? Were we really helpless from the start?_

It’s not a question either of them can answer, and they sit for hours with the tang of Xehanort’s darkness winding through both their scents and count the stars that (once upon a time) weren’t in the sky to be counted.

But time moves on. And slowly, carefully, so do they.

Riku takes up surfing and beats the records left by the prodigy who left the Islands so many years before, and Terra reads obscure history texts and magical theory, and he very carefully does not enter Master Eraqus’ room.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Aqua can see in the dark now.

Maybe it's less that she can see in the dark and more that she has trouble seeing out of it; bright sunlight hurts her eyes now, after too long in the Realm of Darkness, and the long battles that followed in strange in-between places didn't do her any favors.

She tries sunglasses (Sora's suggestion) but when they break for the fifth day in a row she throws the pieces away instead of trying to repair them. She's just too active for them to work. She fights and they fall off, or she takes a hit to the face and they crack, or she falls and they break along with her nose when she hits the ground.

Sora has the same problem on some days, when Riku and Kairi use their respective magics to wrestle him into something resembling a human form. But he never fights as a human anymore and the silly sunglasses he lazes around in disappear with his mottled skin and brightly colored clothes whenever he's needed.

Until then, though, he sunbathes. It’s as adorable as it is disconcerting when Aqua sees him on the roof of a house curled up like a cat, with Ven using his stomach as an impromptu pillow. Every once in a while one of them shifts and dislodges a shingle, or cracks a limb against the chimney, and are roused by a string of inventive curses from indoors.

 

When she finally stops giggling and moves on, she finds Cid packing for his monthly trip to Traverse Town, more reliable than clockwork. He has to have help from Merlin to fit everything into his gummi ship, but insists on doing as much as he can with just hands and suitcase and stubbornness that he calls skill.

"Don't lose them," he says offhand, tossing her a pair of goggles with practiced carelessness. "The materials are a pain in the ass to work with."

Turning them over in her hands, she can see why. The glass is dark and has a strange sheen that suggests enchantment from Merlin, and there’s Leon’s hand in the metalwork and the blue tinge to the sides, and the soft silk strap has been embroidered in Aerith's neat stitching with runes she recognizes for armor and magic and light.

There’s another set sitting on his desk, yellows and reds and bright blue paint with silver and black strings woven through the fabric.

"Thank you, Cid," she says, and he chases her out and pretends not to be happy that she likes them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't technically an AU.... until KH3 happens. Then it will be.  
> So not until the apocalypse, right?


	4. birth by sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone needs to rest eventually. Some more than others.  
> (Ven sleeps a lot.)

She's sure Ven sleeps at night, wakes to his heavy sleepy warmth between her and Terra when she's roused again by her nightmares- but he sleeps all day, too. Not in bed, like the others seem to expect, but everywhere else.

(It's probably better that way. Seeing him in bed, too tired or wounded to get up... it brings back memories. Bad ones.)

That doesn't make it any less nerve-wracking when Terra finds him with his legs dangling off the tower roof, well on his way to an afternoon nap.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

One night, Riku walks into Yen Sid’s office and finds the place completely trashed. There are books and papers covering the floor in a messy layer, pulled from folders and shelves and drawers. The trash can has been upturned, one of the curtains for the window is missing, and there is a decidedly large file cabinet laying on its side.

Riku forgets what he came in for, distracted by the mess, and nearly leaves before he notices a soft sound- breathing. He creeps around the room, carefully searching for the intruder, and has just given up when he notices a shock of blond hair underneath the desk. He bends, and there’s Ven, sound asleep, a trio of books held to his chest.

When an irritated Yen Sid storms into the common rooms later and asks who burned a good half of his paperwork, it’s Lea he suspects and not Ven. Riku sits back to watch the carnage and decides not to inform him.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

On a whim, Kairi drops by Traverse Town, curious to see how people are doing. She hasn’t quite met everyone here, but she knows enough from the stories her boys spun to figure out who is who and where they are. From the time of the month she should be in time for Cid to be in town instead of Radiant Garden, but she’s never quite sure about dates and schedules and they tend to be a little iffy when you’re traveling between worlds.

She finds Cid’s shop and steps inside, pleasantries on her lips- and there’s the man himself, holding a broom and looking positively frazzled. He’s carefully poking someone curled up atop the fireplace, and Kairi recognizes that outfit, the bedhead, the quiet snores.

She decides not to ask how he fell asleep up there, or when, but does tell Aqua and Terra where he’s disappeared off to when she’s on her way back.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Terra stays over at the island one week. He tells the nosey mouse that it’s to train the youngsters, and leaves out the knowledge that Riku promised to help him figure out a way to meditate.  


The first day, after sparring with Riku and a screeching blob of darkness, he flops into the little bed the kids had pulled out for him and passes right out-and awakes, in the morning, to a solid weight on his stomach.

It’s Ven, of course it is. Never mind when or how he got here when Terra hadn’t seen him all day. He carefully dislodges the snoring ball of keyblader and goes to make some tea before the others wake up.

 

The next morning, he tries to roll over before realising he can’t move his legs, on top of the Ven-sized weight on his belly. He pats at them and rather than touching blankets, comes into contact with darkness, and now Anti is hissing, fuck, he woke him up and he’s pissed.

It takes a solid ten minutes before Terra is freed from the clutches of Anti and Ven, and he wraps them up like a bento in the blankets before heading off to watch the sun rise. (He makes burrito jokes at them for the rest of the day, though, and gets some nasty scratches during training for it.)

 

That night, Terra fully expects his nighttime visitors. He and Riku exhausted themselves sparring after dinner, and wound up flopping into the same bed. He wakes up with Riku practically on top of him, Ven once again on his stomach, and Anti curled around their heads on top of the pillows like a cat.

He has to call Kairi for help extracting himself from the pile. (She takes pictures. He’s fairly certain Aqua and the Princesses have their own copies by the end of the afternoon.)

 

The night after that, he resigns himself to his fate and tries to wait up for the nighttime cuddlers. He catches Riku padding into his room and they find a way to be comfortable _without_ smothering him, and when Ven swings through the window and takes a dive onto the bed Terra ruffles his hair, but he passes out before long.

In the morning Anti is flopped across everyone's’ bellies as best he can, Kairi is spooned up against Riku’s back, and Terra has been subtly nudged to the edge of the bed. He almost falls out when he tries to roll over (thank goodness for combat reflexes.)

 

When night falls again, Terra lays down and stares at the ceiling until Ven joins him. Rather than want to stay up and catch the sneaky cuddlers in the act, he simply...can’t sleep. He plays idly with Ven’s hair long past when the blond falls asleep, and accepts it as Riku, Kairi, and Sora file in one after another to snuggle. He finally starts to drop off with everyone piled on top of him, but faintly registers the mattress shifting under someone’s weight.

Terra is awakened before dawn by the unmistakable sound of something hitting the floor. Something large and awkward, and something that is quietly cursing up a storm. Riku and Kairi are awakened by the sound as well, and Kairi creates a small light to see what the noise was-and there’s Lea on the floor, rubbing his head. How he got here and why he decided to try to join a slumber party on a bed that barely fits two is anyone’s guess. He tries to joke it off, and the trio wave him back up onto the bed and find a way to fit him (mostly entailing laying half on top of Terra and half on the edge of the bed and carefully curling around Ven, and involving quite a few elbows to people's stomachs in the process) and they all go back to sleep, and wind up sleeping in.

 

The last night they all go to bed at once, and no one bothers pretending they won’t end up using Terra as an oversized pillow before morning. Instead they gather mattresses and pillows and blankets and turn someone’s bedroom into one massive bed, curtains over the window drawn to give the illusion of a pillow fort of truly epic proportions.

When Terra finally wakes up he can’t move under the weight of so many sleeping bodies, no matter how much he likes his tea or his habit of watching the sunrise.

He thinks maybe he doesn’t mind so much. Maybe just this once he can let himself drift back to sleep, casting off for the land of dreams and trusting that his friends will be his anchor.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Aqua is worried. This isn’t, and has never been, a rare occurrence, but today its because of a missing keyblader. Terra had told her that Ven was going to visit Halloween Town- no reason given by the blond child- but upon arriving and promptly interrogating the populace, no one seemed to know where he was. Jack had glimpsed a “blondie” in the hills, and so Aqua investigated that area, but found nothing. Sally had mentioned seeing a boy parkour up the tallest building in town, but there’s nothing up there.

Aqua is about to go back and recruit Sora for reconnaissance when she hears a commotion and discovers Lock, Shock, and Barrel arguing amongst themselves about...a missing bathtub?

They inform her that the bathtub has feet. And moves. She tries not to question whether the thing is alive or a machine or… whatever it is, and focuses on tracking it down. (It can’t possibly be stranger than the living brooms she knows King Mickey keeps in his castle. But…. really, a bathtub?)

The children are surprisingly helpful, and manage to recruit Sally and Jack into the search proper, and everyone splits up to try to find the tub, because Aqua knows Ven is usually involved in shit like this.

Their search doesn’t turn anything up until the ghost dog comes zipping from the graveyard and leads them there- the bathtub must have circled around and entered while people were looking elsewhere. They all rush over, and Aqua’s suspicions are confirmed when she spots a familiar bedhead poking over the edge of the tub.

It takes far longer than you would think to catch a bathtub.

After quite a bit of running, jumping, and a few quick spells (she has to keep the others from using Ice spells, and declines to explain why), they finally get the thing immobilised.  Sure enough, Ven is passed out in the tub, a relatively warm blanket wrapped close around him and another folded up and tucked under his head. Aqua has no idea how he sleeps in this kind of situation, honestly.

She gently wakes him up and carries him home, after apologising to the locals for the ruckus. (Jack gets a look in his eye- er, eyesocket- of inspiration. She doesn’t ask.)

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

The trio gave up on sleeping in different rooms long before moving back to the Land of Departure. Ven isn't sure if the others ever caught on; the bedroom they all fell asleep in only depended on who got tired first.

This gets a little more complicated when they're in a much larger castle, with their old bedrooms too full of memories to touch. Aqua ends up dedicating an entire week to clearing out the guest wing, and they end up in a single master bedroom with several futons pushed together, mindful of Terra's tendency to fall out of bed in the mornings.

Riku promises to help build a properly giant bed when he and Kairi and Sora visit, but it turns into a project with the Radiant Garden Committee when Cid finds out and gets everyone there on board. So now they have no timetable for when the bedroom will house a proper bed- but whenever it happens, it's sure to be an adventure.

For now they sleep in a pile that keeps Aqua safe in her nightmares and keeps Ven from sleeping too long, a pile to reassure Terra that they’re still alive and Aqua that they’re real, a pile for Ven to curl against Terra’s side when he gets cold in the middle of the night- and the room is a safe place for the three to finally, finally rest.

 


	5. my queen of hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they've finally come home (and right back to her arms.)

They live on the island for weeks before their families find out.

It’s not like they couldn’t stay there indefinitely; magic is an infinite source of fresh water, and coconuts and fish don’t make the worst possible diet. Sora while fishing is a thing of beauty too, now that he can melt into shadows and move as fast as light.

Their first meal on their first night home (way back when the boys were recovering from the World That Never Was and all the battles in it) wasn’t fish or travel rations but a single paopu, split three ways. No words were exchanged, no words were needed- it would have cheapened the act, to force out explanations for something beyond explaining.

Speaking of explaining. They’re not particularly looking forward to telling anyone just what they’ve been up to for these last few years.

Sora, understandably, doesn’t want his parents to even know he’s still alive; the risk is too great that they’ll be afraid of him, the benefit too small. Riku claims he’s just staying with Sora but they all know he’s staying for similar reasons, no matter how much he denies that he’s ever afraid of anything. Kairi loves the islands but she loves her boys more- and, she reminds them, if they try to do anything without her she’ll kick their collective asses, because they’re never leaving her again.

They almost didn’t come back to the islands at all, at first. They’re certainly welcome in Radiant Garden, or a double-handful of other worlds they’ve visited or saved or met survivors from. But those aren’t _home_ the way Destiny Islands is home. For all that Riku and Sora’s memories of it are stretched and faded and worn thin from years of battle and magic and being erased-and-restored, it’s still the first place they think of, a place they held as a sort of distant comfort on rough nights in the field or when sleeping in the Gummi ships between worlds.

But that Destiny Islands is a concept, an ideal. Real people (they know very well) aren’t nearly always so nice, and being from a place full of light doesn’t guarantee anything like kindness or understanding towards oddities.

(Disney Castle is a painful memory for all of them.)

So they camped out on the play island when they first got back, and then they got called away for the Mark of Mastery trial, and after that they were far too busy to come back and visit civilians still clueless about what lurks in the night and the dark.

_nobody-wants-a-monster_ Sora tells them in his own half-voiced way of communication, and if it were anyone else Riku would accuse them of self pity and kick their ass. But Sora isn’t resigned or pitying. His mental voice is prickly with irritation and solid with certainty that neither Riku nor Kairi can argue with.

_nobody-wants-a-monster_ he insists again, and he means outsiders and not them but Riku can’t help but pull him and Kairi into a hug in response to it. For once Sora doesn’t hiss at the affection but leans into his touch and presses his head into Kairi’s shoulder, and even Riku’s darkness is satisfied because all of his precious people are right here, here in his arms.

-Then, because dramatic timing _absolutely hates them,_ they hear shouts and the unmistakeable sound of people on the beach.

“...well, shit,” Riku barely has time to mutter before Sora is on his feet and hissing, clawlike hands tense and ready at his sides and eyes too wide for any human face. He loops a finger through the thin necklace around Sora’s neck, the only clothing item the half-heartless boy cares to preserve when he isn’t in a human form.

Kairi is already on her feet, the dying light in one hand betraying her combat reflexes and the Keyblade she almost summoned.

“Get to the secret place,” she snaps, and then she’s slipping sideways to come out of the rock cover in a spot that won’t immediately give them away. Riku would like to admire her backside as she goes, but Sora’s already melting into shadow and Riku’s hair is a fucking beacon to anyone searching for him when he isn’t wearing a hood. So he gets.

The cave is dark as it’s always been, and Sora is already there waiting for him and anxiously clawing at a boulder in the center. (He never scratches the walls. Riku never knows whether to feel fond or irritated at his caution.)

Riku makes himself useful pulling clothes out of their stash, finding underwear and pants and a shirt that’ll fit Sora when they inevitably get caught and have to shift him to human form. There’s a disapproving hiss from behind him, but Sora otherwise resigns himself to it. He'd probably be a nudist if they let him.

Kairi doesn’t rejoin them immediately, and Sora's impromptu scratching post is significantly smaller by the time she drops in through the hole in the cave roof.

In lieu of a greeting she says: They’ve already figured it out.

So then they have to calm Sora back down from (literally) climbing the walls, and eventually Kairi just noogies him into submission and sits on him when he’s back in a human form. Riku wants pictures. He really, really wants pictures. He settles for firmly preserving the mental image instead.

Then it takes a while longer to figure out what they’re going to tell everyone, because “we know you’re not alone on the island” and “I saw two people with you” leaves a lot of room for (as Kairi puts it) creative explanative storytelling.

“You mean lying,” Riku says. She smiles at him, bright and sweet.

“I mean creative storytelling. I’ve been taking lessons from the other princesses- I don’t have to say anything that isn’t technically true.”

Riku just blinks at her.

“...Have I mentioned how terrifying you are, lately?”

That earns him a giggle and he leans in for a brief kiss, which turns into more than one when Sora makes cranky noises and wants in on the affections, so it’s another good thirty minutes before they’re ready to leave.

The people outside are probably impatient. Riku finds that he really doesn’t care.

So they eventually come out, Kairi with her head held high and Riku trying to follow suit and Sora squishing wisps of darkness between his toes like he wants to disappear into them. Kairi keeps her arms looped through theirs as though this is just another stroll through the Agrabah palace gardens, never mind their height differences or Sora’s anxious slouchiness, but there’s no hiding the way she tenses up when they round a corner and the welcoming party comes into view.

“What the hell?” is the first thing Wakka says when he sees them, and that kind of sets the tone for how things go from there. Selphie covers her mouth and Tidus just gapes, and the adults with them shuffle in the sand and make uncomfortable noises as they stare and stare and stare.

Fuck it, Riku thinks, and opens his mouth to say something. Kairi beats him to it.

“Is there a problem?” she asks, all mischief and silk-over-steel in the polite haughtiness of her face and the grin he knows she’s holding back from. She’s taken to the lessons from the other Princesses like a duck to water (a figure of speech Riku really wanted to test on Donald, just once, even if the magician tried to murder him afterwards.)

Wakka, apparently the spokesperson, just sputters. Riku can't blame him. Kairi-the-princess is a force of nature that even Xehanort couldn't stop; Wakka doesn't stand a chance.

“I- no- Kairi, seriously, what the hell?”

Then she really does give in and smile, as brilliant as the rising sun.

“They’re my boys,” she says, “and we’re finally home.”


	6. domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in a broken sort of way everything is perfect here.

Eating is difficult, and by week three of living alone in the Land of Departure all three of them are a mess.

Ven waffles between munching down the entire pantry and forgetting it exists; Terra doesn't seem to realize that hunger is a real thing and everyone has to remind him; Aqua can't remind him, because she has enough trouble even eating on her own.

Terra, surprisingly, is the worst out of the three.

(Certainly he’s eager to believe himself the worst, or the worst of himself. But that’s for other things, more serious and necessary things. He thinks. That’s how it works. Right?)

When his stomach lets out a loud grumble during training he stares down at it in disbelief, and the baffled look on his face sends Aqua into fits of laughter. He returns the favor later when the library’s utter silence is broken by her own stomach’s hungry rumbling- it’s so out of place among the dignified and ancient shelves of books and knowledge.

So far Ven’s favorite solution when he finds out the others haven’t eaten is to follow them around everywhere insisting that they go and eat. So much like normal, but a little louder and more persistent. And with a theme. 

“He’s grown into a mother hen,” Terra says in an aside to Aqua when the determined child succeeds in herding them both into the kitchen before noon. She's snacking on dry cereal, dressed for a lazy day in leggings and one of Terra's older shirts.

“He got it from you,” she says with utter seriousness, and when he sputters she shoves a handful of cereal into his open mouth.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Ven likes bubble baths. He hates showers, hates changing clothes, hates being naked- but bubble baths are good. He can soak away the aches and pains where his body isn't-quite-right, and play with towers and towers of bubbles, and never have to look at where his scars are (or more importantly, where they aren’t.)

Having one's heart broken doesn't really leave a physical mark.

...Also, bubbles are awesome. 

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

When it comes to household duties at the castle, Terra’s responsibility is the laundry.

It wasn’t always like that. Before, of course, it was Aqua- and before her, when they were both younger, Master Eraqus.

It’s a good memory. Terra and Aqua, smaller than Ven is now, watching with huge eyes as the Master put the laundry in the massive tub reserved for it and scraped a shard of soap off the block kept on a shelf just for this. Then he cast Whirlpool.

Terra had leaned so far over the tub he almost fell in, and Aqua immediately set into begging Master Eraqus to teach them how to do it. He’d laughed then, one hand still in the back of Terra’s shirt, and said:

 _This will be a lesson I teach to both of you. You cannot rely on me forever; there will come a day when you need to do this on your own._ _Now, for the first component-_

Terra can still hear his voice, back and back in distant memory, whenever he tries the spell. It’s bittersweet, like stretching a wound. A lot of people and places and things are like that now.

Aqua is too used to battlefield magic; the last time she tried to do the laundry, the tub ended up dented and full of shredded fabric. It’s a humiliation for someone who specializes in the magical arts, and he knows she’s spent hours upon hours trying to weaken the spell again.

He never thought he’d be so grateful for being weak.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

It was a regular thing for them to sleep beneath the stars, back before the Mark of Mastery exam that started everything.

Ven would be first, always eager to see the sky, and Aqua would follow with blankets and pillows and tease him for showing up earlier than planned. Terra would be last, sometimes with a snack to split into three pieces, settling in as a particularly warm and sturdy backrest.

Master Eraqus joined them, once. It was a little after Ven woke up, before he was quite aware of everything around him, and when Aqua and Terra introduced him to the starry sky he fell in love immediately.

That night is precious in everyone’s memory- the Master pointing out the names of the constellations, Ven wide-eyed and content between Aqua and Terra, the three of them telling Ven the stories behind the stars until they fell asleep. Aqua had woken to Eraqus keeping patient watch over them, and while the others slept the two sat in peace and watched the sunrise.

They haven’t done it since coming back. There’s always work to do, there's always an excuse not to, and more importantly- the castle doesn’t feel quite as safe anymore. Walking barefoot to the kitchen is one thing. But going outside in pajamas without armor or protection is something else entirely.

Aqua thinks maybe it’s time they changed that. She finds the blankets (some old, some new) and sets them out on the kitchen table, folded neatly with a note on top.

 

_stargazing night!_

_meet at the usual place_

 

She goes early, at sunset, spreading the blankets over the spot with the springiest grass and fluffing the pillows until it looks just right. She brings a basket too- beneath the lid lie three sets of Keyblade armor. Just in case.

It’s not so much practicality as it is a sense of safety. And a way to ensure the boys show up.

And show up they do, both at once, older and younger hand in hand. Ven’s bright hair is a beacon at a distance, but Terra’s darker skin and hair nearly blend into the dusk. A matched set, she thinks, and something in her warms at the thought.

It’s not quite the same as it used to be. They’re all a little taller, and their conversations aren’t as light or easy as they were before, and the pillows and blankets aren’t-quite-right compared to the memories of them. It takes some adjusting and experimenting to get comfortable, and that is different too, the new shape of them adjusting for a wound here, a tender spot there, until everyone is comfortable.

It’s not the same. (But, Aqua thinks, maybe that’s for the best.)

They stay up admiring the cosmos and trading mission stories until deep into the night- and when sleep finally comes, they dream straight on til morning.


	7. the future doesn't scare me at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time marches on, and so do they.

There are things the trio doesn't talk about. They don't talk about the way Aqua summons her Keyblade straight from sleep if not woken during daylight. They don't discuss Vanitas or why Ven destroyed a portion of his own heart or why he sometimes draws himself with yellow eyes that never come.

And- they don't discuss what happened between Terra and Master Xehanort.

They don't mention the glint of gold in his eyes after a day in the library, or the strands of silver hair that he carefully, methodically pulls out every time they grow in. Nor do they mention his aversion to haircuts, even now that they can visit somewhere proper to get it done. When he comes to dinner with the back of his hair hacked too short to touch his neck and his bangs brushing past his eyes, Ven just climbs into his lap while Aqua digs around for scissors to neaten up the mess.

When Aqua reads Master Eraqus' journals and the records of the Master before him, she doesn't mention that his favorite foods are the same as Xehanort when he was young (or that they've changed from what they were, before everything ever happened.)

He spends more time than he used to in the books, pulling out ever older and more esoteric tomes on topics even Ven and Aqua have never heard of. He reads in languages they don’t know, voice rising and falling through the ancient shelves like student after student before him. They don’t mention that he never spoke those languages before, or that he never had the time to learn them. They don’t ask the names of the words he speaks or the runes he traces- and if they ever could, he wouldn’t have an answer.

They especially don’t mention how Terra circles around the Master’s room, how he never dares step over the threshold. It’s like he’s irresistibly drawn to the room by some dark magnetic force, but it’s something guilt will never let him touch.

It itches at Ven, whose nature and light mean he tends towards honesty and openness above all else. But he knows that sometimes people need to pretend to heal before they really can, and the fragile peace they've found is too precious to break so soon or so easily.

They have had knowledge, and they have had learning, and they have had war.

What they really need is time.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

She can't precisely remember all of her time in the Realm of Darkness. It blurs into one massive dark nightmare, fighting and fighting and being lost, moments here and there crystallized in her memory with all the sharp-edged precision of the labradorite boulders that litter the shore of the Dark Margin.

She remembers finding Ventus, asleep in a coffin as empty as his heart. Remembers recognizing him as hallucination, and not reality, and still falling to her knees at the horror of it. There were twisted versions of flowers she knew: forget-me-nots, odd black daisies, scattered asters and anemones all crushed beneath her as she knelt and wept.

She remembers fighting herself in every way possible for hours, years, days. Remembers seeing tatters in her clothes, in her double’s clothes, scuffs and scars on her armor that she never remembered getting. She didn’t dare to look in a mirror for so long, and water and energy and time was too precious to spend on little things like looking nice.

She remembers reversing hours, turning the clock back and forth until she never knew where or when she had started.

She remembers Terra, and Ven, and Xehanort. She remembers Mickey, all earnest gestures and greater good and hopeful eyes.

She remembers falling.

Aqua doesn't know how old she is anymore. She throws out the calendar that used to hang on the wall of her room and the jingling alarm clock that used to wake her in the mornings; she doesn’t want to look at them any longer.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Ven jingles when he walks. It’s an anklet he wears low on his left, thin strands of black thread and dark dark beads that can’t seem to decide if they’re purple or blue or black. He likes to curl up in remote corners and look at it, spins it between his fingers when he lies down for yet another nap.

The sound of it is soothing, grounding. _You’re here,_ the clinking beads say, _you’re here, you’re real, you’re here._ The cool watery weight keeps him tied to the earth on the bad days, the days when he’s not much more than a shell wrapped around an artificial light; a drifting dandelion, a barefoot ghost that floats here and there and couldn’t even say his name.

(He never planned to live through the war. He never planned to outlive Vanitas, to outlive Master Eraqus, to outlive Master Xehanort. There was nothing in him that intended to outlast this.

For as long as he lives and breathes, Ven will always be on borrowed time.)

The anklet was a gift from Sora, not long after the boy went dark and left a handful of dazed Nobodies in his place. Ven gives him a necklace in return of thin white beads that have a light texture and a lighter weight, and neither of them ever says where they got the materials from.

In one of her letters Kairi tells him that Sora never takes the necklace off. Ven wonders why she even needs to mention it- he knew that already.

Bonds of the heart are all good and well, but sometimes you need ties a little heavier to hold you where you should be.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Namine came to Terra once, long before the end of the war. She only took over from Kairi in borrowed moments, hidden moments, times when all the others had duties to tend to and places they should be. 

“You have too many memories,” she greeted him, voice quiet as the morning breeze and cutting just as deep as the nighttime storms.

(Not everywhere they sheltered had the gift of eternal twilight, that disorienting timelessness that Yen Sid had wrapped his tower in.)

When all he did was stare, she reached up and up and up to rest a hand over his heart.

“You have too many memories,” she said again. “Like Sora- when he remembers different things in the same place, all at the same time.”

Terra’s voice was rough in his throat when he answered.  

“I was divided up for a decade.”

“Yes,” she said. Took a deep breath. “It hurts.”

“Yes,” he said.

They stood in silence for a long time. He breathed, careful and slow, remembering years of learning meditation. Feeling the fragile heat of her hand against his chest. 

“If you ask,” she said, finally, “I can pull the chains apart.”

“Will you?”

“I can.”

She waited, patient, until he shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said, low and thin and lonely as the sound Ven made when learning their Master had died ten years before. “I’m sorry, but- not yet. Just a little longer.”

“I understand,” she said, and left him alone in the silence and the sun.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Aqua tries not to make appointments anymore. She's never when and where she should be, whether it means she’s five minutes late or so many hours that those waiting have gone home- or so early that she isn't let in through the gates of wherever she's going. She has dinner early and breakfast late, and lunch not at all if no one reminds her. She spends too long in the library and longer in the training courts because she’s forgotten how to stop. She’s forgotten how to listen to herself again.

(Ven and Terra remind her, but she always thinks they’re exaggerating. Then she collapses from exhaustion and hunger and realizes that they’re not.)

Her sleep schedule is best left unmentioned, if it ever existed in the first place. She isn't sure anymore. She isn’t sure of anything.

Every time something happens Aqua can't help but remember the clock in the Realm of Darkness, remember twisting time this way and that to make her way home. Can't help but think about the pristine way the castle unfolded from a decade of sleep, no dust on the outdated library shelves, Master Eraqus' cup of tea still lukewarm where he left it. The way the covers of Ven’s bed were unmade because he left in a hurry. The way there were still scorch marks in the main hall from her and Terra’s Mark of Mastery exams, so long ago that it must have been another life.

All the important people understand. But being early for grocery shopping and late for dinners with royalty is rather bad for one's general reputation.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Ven doesn’t always use his own keyblades.

He has Wayward Wind, of course, or what’s left of it- it was never quite the same after being broken that day when he was frozen and tossed down a cliff (to forge the χ-blade) to die. He has Lost Memory, a beautiful and deadly reminder of apprenticeship and memories and existence and a life he will never know again.

(He wonders once what that blade would become, if he could somehow remember everything. If he could be whole. -But he only wonders once. Some things are too painful to linger on.)

And as Aqua wields the keyblade that once belonged to Master Eraqus, Ven can summon the one that belonged to Master Xehanort.

It feels different from his own heart’s keyblades. More real, less solid. It feels wrong and right all at once, and the oddity nags at him every time he summons it.

It feels familiar- but of course it does. After all, it’s the blade his Master wielded for as long as Ven knew him. His inheritance, as the only true apprentice the Keyblader had bothered to take. 

(Is that really all there is?)

He doesn’t know what name it has, what powers it holds besides tearing people apart. It hasn’t told him, not like Wayward and Memory and the others do. And for all that he has time to explore, time to get to know the blade and make it his own… when that uncanny eye fixes on him, Ven doesn’t know if he really wants to.

(No matter how much time may pass, it will always be the keyblade that broke his heart.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look up blue labradorite sometime. Then look at the boulders on the Dark Margin. Tell me there's a difference.
> 
> What Ven's wearing is a variation of the Dark Anklet in canon. Just a bit fancier. As for what he gave Sora.... well.  
> Sora got his materials from the Dark Margin. Ven went to the Keyblade Graveyard instead.  
> I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.


	8. at the start of it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is an eye that watches all (he has seen the light.)

 

He might exist, but he might not. If you were to ask him, he’d shrug, say something halfway thoughtful, and then turn it around on you and dramatically claim you want him gone. His lifespan might have ended (even he isn’t sure when or even if he died), but his line of sight is endless and timeless. He watches the children go to war, when he himself is young, and he wails. He watches the blades pile high in a desert, and his body aches. Hope and resignation war, unable to tell if he can change the future, unable to know if he has already. 

He distracts himself with pranks and jokes, in his-present. (It can be so hard, sometimes, to tell which is his, with the Eye showing him hundreds, thousands of years at once, his apprentices finding him staring at a book blankly with tears on his unseen face- but he tries.) Aced reacts so nicely to a properly timed tease, and his flock never quite know how to react when he flips their statements around for humorous effect. 

When you know the world is going to end, the little things become a lot bigger. 

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

He tries not to show his face to others.

“For safety,” he says softly. 

“I had a bad hair day, I had a horrendous pimple, I accidentally did my eyeliner with a permanent marker,” he says boisterously. 

“My head accidentally got replaced with a bear,” he says with all seriousness, and enjoys Aced’s sputtering and Ava and Gula’s giggles and the badly hidden laughter of Ira and Invi and Luxu.

His students never know which one is the truth that day, and he prefers it that way. Easier to disappear if no one knows you by sight, even if it means your children have been raised by a cloak and a hood.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

He makes himself a Chirithy, soon after the testing phase is done. He never allows anyone else to see her. She’s tall enough that he can hold her comfortably, small enough he can carry her around, and always somewhere between light and dark.

One night, she asks him.

“Master, you made us of light, to protect the light, so why am I different? Why are you?"

He chuckles and pets her head, and murmurs quiet words about balance, about eternity, about the future. He divulges information to her that no other being knows, knowing she would never tell another. She contemplates it for a week, and returns while he is writing to climb into his lap and do her best at trying to hug him. 

Tears prick obscured eyes, and he curls around the only being he’s allowed close enough to see him beneath the coat.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

One evening, he’s lost in thought and memories of the future when someone approaches him. He responds after a few minutes, hazily registering a shock of blonde hair jutting at strange angles, a curious, concerned face, piercing blue eyes. A handful of names run through his mind, and he grabs one.

“Ah, Roxas, what is--”

Gula’s face brings him back to his-present.

“Sorry, sorry, I was… dreaming, yes, that’s it. What do you need, Gula?”

Gula looks at him like he knows, like somehow he’s aware that there’s a chain of identical boys who will come into the world after him, and for a moment the Master considers spilling his secrets to the teenager standing before him- but he refrains, and the moment passes, and Gula asks his question.

Later, the Master of Masters imagines the pandemonium it’d be to teach all of them, and smiles fondly.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

He makes it a habit to treat Keyblades like people, things with life and personality. His children accept it as another odd quirk, but another Master presses on the matter.

“Why do you talk to them? They’re just  _ weapons,  _ ‘Bia! What, do you talk to dressers and tables too?”

The man’s sneer is irritating. The Master of Masters gives in and responds.

“Yours is a Starlight. She enjoys classical music, and wishes you would clean her more often. The man in burgundy across the hall uses Treasure Trove, and his ‘blade is a rougher guy with a heart of gold. And mine-” and with a flash that is neither light nor dark, simply brightness and then being, he summons his own and holds it near the light-blue gentleman in front of him, sizing him up with both his eyes. “-sie is one of my only confidants. I trust sier enough to bear my Eye.”

He half-turns away, mind on the arrogance of wielders to come. “Perhaps if you listened to more than those who fill your ears with empty flattery, you would notice the beings who keep you alive.”

The man splutters, but the Master is gone before he can say anything of note.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

One night the Master arrives in the foyer of his castle with the use of a Dark Corridor, too tired to use anything else. He closes it, shuffles into the kitchen, yawns, and sets about obtaining some milk and chocolate chip cookies. 

It’s not until he turns to sit that he notices Aced standing in the entryway, watching him.

Aced bombards him with questions. Is it truly him? Is he okay? Has he fallen to the dark? How can he do that? Is it safe? Why?

The Master is tired. He refuses to disclose why. He assures Aced that he carefully cultivates the balance, and that’s why he uses both light and dark- and then falls asleep, faceplanting into his cookies.

Aced hovers anxiously near him for half an hour before leaving and returning with his soft poncho, draping it over his sleeping master with the care one would use for arranging porcelain figures.

His questions can wait for the morning.

(And if he forgets to ask- that’s okay, too.)

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

He knows of Xehanort. 

He prefers not to think about it, about the horrible man who comes to use his Keyblade, but on dark nights his thoughts drift to the things his Eye reveals. Injuring children, ripping Hearts apart, a thirst for power that’s never quenched, going farther than even the most arrogant of the Master’s peers, and using his  _ own creation _ to do all of this and more-

He can see the future from Xehanort’s hand, and he is rueful.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

He’s always loved cats. Companions who come and go at their own accord, who speak a language many consider secretive, but who are soft and kind if you treat them correctly-yes, he sees a lot of himself in them.

Of course he makes each Chirithy in the form of a cat. A comfort and a guardian for all of these doomed children- yes. It’s the least he can do. (And if he remembers the fierceness of felines, and the claws and teeth they can turn- that is his own business.)

He wishes, sometimes, that he had a person to treat him as gently as they would a kitten. But he has his own Chirithy, and his children (who are so very small) and as exhausting and terrifying as it is he thinks that is enough.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

The Master writes in a frenzy. He feels the days growing shorter, his time available to do so nearing an end, and so he spends more and more time hidden away in his study, lost in worlds and times his students may never see.

This afternoon, however, he’s quietly counting aloud to himself.

“59, 60, minute-1, minute-2…”

Chirithy, who had been napping on the foot of his bed, rouses at a snort and pads across the room to him.

“Master, what are you doing?”

“Shh, don’t make me lose count- 23, 24- this is the best one I’ve seen all week!” 

Barely contained glee fills the cloaked man’s voice, and he continues counting.

“28, 29- ah! Did he finally snap out of it? --nope, someone else walked by. Hell, do I keep counting from the first or start again..?”

Several minutes later, he finally explains between giggling fits to his confused feline companion.

“A wielder who wound up with my Keyblade summoned it and then got distracted by his friend’s butt- for a solid minute and a half- and then got distracted by  _ another  _ butt! Ohh, man, this is  _ gold!” _

Chirithy does not always understand her Master, but at least he’s enjoying himself.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Very rarely, he gets angry.

He always hides it during the day, is aggressively chipper and friendly unless someone’s an ass to him or his children, but at night he lets loose. The training grounds are a great spot for releasing pent-up rage, and he takes full advantage of them.

He sets up the targets, he takes a moment to breathe deep, and then he unleashes magical attacks so strong that half the Chirithies in the town perk up their ears. He finds a way to muffle sound and yells himself hoarse about things to come, people, about what will be and the futility of it all, as he vaporises training dummies and stray Heartless and the occasional tree.

(As time wears on, he takes special glee in pretending a particular dummy is the Master-that-does-not-deserve-his-title, whaling on wood and burlap with any of his Keyblades until the thing is barely a pile of tinder. He cannot truly fight the man, not like this, but this soothes his desire to.)

These nights usually end with him angrily weeping, unable to stop the tears, the helplessness overwhelming him. Sometimes, one or several of his children awaken, stirred by lights or sound or magic, and he disappears or quickly hides his emotions behind quips about sparring under the stars, cutting the night short. 

No one told him the future could be so dark.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

One early morning, he awakens to sun streaming through a window and birdsong- but double. Dazed, he lays in bed and allows the Eye to show him the aftermath of a battle so far off and yet so near.

Children, teenagers, nobodies, somebodies, those between- piled up in an old room, in an old castle. All of them are sleeping, save for one who has slept far too much. A shock of silver hair shifts in the pile, and a man with hair red as the sunset nearly rolls off the bed the group have crammed themselves onto.

The entire scene emanates peace, and safety, and calm. The soldiers have survived the war. The children have made it home.

The one holding his Keyblade turns it and he’s treated to a familiar face: gravity-defying blond hair, blue eyes, and a heart jigsawed together from fragments and friends. The boy’s eyes skate over the ‘blade, and he makes eye contact for a long, tenuous moment before someone mumbles in their sleep and he breaks it to glance up at them. 

The Master smiles, sleepily. There’s an after, after all. 

The boy unsummons his Keyblade as his friends slowly begin to awaken, and the Master of Masters decides that’s reason enough to celebrate and sleep in today. 

Invi and Ira finally come to wake him at noon, concerned that he’s injured, and he loudly complains that today is a day for rest when Ira tries to pester him out of bed. He tries to hide his face from his pupils until they leave him to get ready for that afternoon’s spars, but they still glimpse a genuine, wide grin, and shining tears on his cheek.

Perhaps it isn’t all for nothing, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you didn't see THAT point of view coming.
> 
> Anyone know the band I Am King? They've done some KH themed music. And given how accurate some of their 2012 song lyrics are turning out to be, I'm wondering if they had spoilers...


	9. restlessly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they have energy enough to destroy worlds. there's an outlet for that.

Lea has a habit of spinning things.

It’s not like he’s Axel, with chakrams to throw everywhere. (Traded them in for a Keyblade, hell yeah. He’s so cool. He’s so cool he’s on _fire._ ) But he’s not little Lea either, the kid with frisbees on his fingers and too much energy for his own good.

Training is great. Training is exhausting.

But even exhausted, his fingers need to _move._

It’s kind of embarrassing. _Isa_ could sit as still as he wanted for long stretches of time. So can Roxas and Xion, if they have to. And it’s not like anyone else seems to have this problem. Sora maybe, but… he’s Sora. That one’s kind of unique.

(Maybe Lea’s just not training hard enough?)

Fighting is good too, but it’s terrifying. He knows Heartless the way Roxas knows computers and hands around his throat, the way Xion knows programming and Riku knows darkness. His hands get shaky and slick with sweat and he covers flinches with jokes and easy shoulder-rolls to show just how Casual and Relaxed he is, only he isn’t. He really, really isn’t.

Merlin and Yen Sid are distinguished masters to learn under, sure, and they believe in the darkness. Lea doesn’t have to believe in it. He knows it more than he wants to. He knows _exactly_ what the Heartless can do to a guy, if even one gets past him.

So after fights his bad habits get even worse, like the nerves and adrenaline just have to get out somehow. And it’s not like he can sneak away to cool down. After a fight, there’s all sorts of things for Lea and the others to take care of. Hapless citizens to check on, damage to clean up, perimeters to secure. Pet cats to rescue from trees. That sort of thing.

‘Sorry, yeah, I gotta ditch my duties to go fiddle with things til my hands stop shaking.’ He doesn’t think that’ll work on anyone. And it’d probably get him one hell of a side-eye from anyone who happened to be around.

So… he makes do. Keeps his keyblade out, sometimes, to fiddle with the chain on it. Keeps some synthesis materials in his pockets, ostensibly to make things with but really to twirl between his fingers. Gets a bracelet with armor runes on it, which is great for a little extra protection but even better to fidget with when no one’s looking.

Maybe he doesn’t hide it as well as he should have. The others give him a ring-within-a-ring during festival season, and the inner ring spins and spins and spins when he pokes at it. Lea keeps it on his off hand- rings and bladework really don’t mix- and it helps. A lot. Nobody (heh) gives him a hard time for it either, and that helps too.

Now he’s just gotta figure out return gifts. Cid keeps a workshop open if you come in at the right time of day, and Lea’s got some ideas....

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

“You know,” Terra says musingly as they all laze around in the morning, unwilling to get out of bed. “I’ve got to stop tearing up the library’s books.”

He’s talking about the shredded corners of every tome he’s read, worn and frayed by restless fingers picking and rubbing until the covers fall apart.

“But it’s such a good way to know which ones you’ve been through,” Aqua says. She slides to stick her face in Terra’s neck (conveniently hiding her grin) and Ven vibrates with suppressed laughter from where he’s comfortably snuggled in between and on them.

“Or to summon some angry librarian’s ghost to murder me.”

“You can’t talk, Aqua” Ven breaks in, craning his neck up to see her. “You keep picking at your clothes!”

She answers that with the gentlest of shoves that rolls Ven down to her and Terra’s feet. He goes with it, giggling all the way. The hems of Aqua’s sleeping clothes are unfolded and open with thread hanging out for her to pull at, which kind of proves his point.

“Silence, young grasshopper,” she intones- then laughs. “You’ve done the same thing to our blankets!”

"Oh, great, there's three of us." Ven says, and twists sideways so he can flop more comfortably and inevitably cut off the blood flow to everyone's legs. Terra snorts inelegantly and Aqua covers a snicker with one hand as he retaliates by raising his knees, forcing Ven to hook himself under Terra's legs or find a new place to sit.

“Maybe we could make something?” Ven suggests in between his attempts to wrestle Terra’s feet into submission. “Like- the wayfinders, maybe.”

“The wayfinders?” Aqua asks. She and Terra exchange glances, neither quite understanding.

“Yeah- Terra, _move-_ but with little gears and things? Or something that moves and won’t break.”

“Like a toy,” Aqua says in dawning realization. Ven can’t answer, too busy getting the breath squished out of him by a mischievous Terra, but his grin widens and that is answer enough.

“Do you think you could?” Terra asks. “I know it’s more complicated- _oof._ ”

Ven makes a smug noise and burrows further into the older boy’s stomach. Aqua has to laugh.

“I think we can figure out something,” she says. “If only to save the books.”

Ven laughs so hard that Terra knocks him all the way off the bed, and their mock-fight continues all the way to breakfast.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Riku notices in bits and pieces- Sora’s always fidgeting. Whether he’s rolling a rock between his fingers, or rubbing cloth over and over, or chewing through anything he can get his teeth on, he’s moving. For a while, Riku just chalks it up to the jitteriness of Shadows.

But one afternoon while they sunbathe, Sora takes his hand and gently strokes his thumb over his knuckles, over and over and over, and Riku remembers him doing the same thing before he became a blob of darkness mostly shaped like his best friend.

So he starts looking for things for Sora.

He starts small, with toys Cid has found in some world or another. Sora loves the button that endlessly clicks, but wears it out. He tries to eat the squishy charms (and almost Riku’s fingers, when the older boy tries to stop him), and things that swirl and spin don’t keep him interested for long.

But Sora keeps his hands hooked in Kairi’s belts and Riku’s pockets whenever he can get away with it, and more than once Riku’s found him with someone’s missing jewelry running his fingers over links and pendants again and again and again.

(He doesn’t steal from strangers. But Mickey and Minnie’s stash of royal and protective jewels and amulets? That’s fair game. Apparently. Riku finally resorted to just mailing them back at the end of every month, but they always turn up in Sora’s hiding spots the week after.)

Truth be told, Riku doesn’t actually mind having his partner in near constant contact. But the edges of his pockets are getting worn and Kairi keeps having to repair her belts and belt loops, and that’s just inconvenient. So he keeps looking.

In hindsight, he probably should have expected the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee to have their own ideas.

In Riku’s defense, of all the things he knew Cid could make from gummis, chew toys was not one of them. So when Leon leads him over to the mechanic whittling away at a bright red block, Aeris making a necklace cord next to him and Yuffie chattering away behind them both- it’s a bit of a shock. Yuffie gets a picture of his face before he picks his jaw back up again, and it takes a full hour of chasing and threatening for Riku to steal that back. And burn it. Kairi doesn’t need to see that, dammit.

Sora loves the heart-shaped pendant. It even lasts an entire month before he wears it out.

They get a lot of care packages from the Garden after that.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh. Sora with a heart-shaped chewie. That was _so incredibly fun_ to write.


	10. in your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no escape from your visions of the world.

Ven dreams in light.

He’s been sleeping for so long that it’s hard to tell real dreams from memories- some dreams are like memories with little twists and wrong things in them, and some memories are soft and confusing enough to be dreams themselves. He knows all the tricks to tell dreams from life, like checking books to see if he can read or looking for reflections to see if he shows up- but that just makes his dreams lucid dreams, and then remembering them is even more confusing.

It’s hardest when he thinks about Castle Oblivion. Some of the Garden townspeople say that you leave a little of your heart in everything important to you; if that’s true, the castle must have been full of him, of little shards of Ven-colored light.

He doesn’t tell them, but he knows it really is true. He was asleep, yeah, but Ven always follows his heart. Even when it’s hidden in a different world, or safely tucked between two Nobodies, or a thousand tiny shards in the castle walls.

Every one of those shards was him. And sometimes those shards- moved.

Vexen never did figure out why some of his Replicas worked and others didn’t. The first blond-haired one lead to a massive search of the castle, searching for Ven- and when he wasn't found, Xemnas ordered his subordinates to search again. They never found him.

Ven couldn’t do much from where he rested, all half asleep and barely aware of anything. The castle itself wouldn’t let him wake up all the way and his thoughts stayed blurred, vague impressions rather than concrete knowledge. But where Ven couldn’t awaken, his replicas could. Even if they didn’t remember anything.

With Ven unfound and time moving by, the first replicas were scrapped and remade and reawoken. With each one Vexen learned to push Ven’s fragments back a little further, until Riku’s replica was just like him- and Xion’s wasn’t too much like anyone at all.

The castle protected Ven from the Organization for years and years, gave him a chance to heal and be safe before Aqua finally came for him. But… still, sometimes he wishes his room in Castle Oblivion had been a little less safe and a little more open.

(He tries not to wonder what it would have been like, to have a twin brother.)

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

It’s a learning process, living like he does.

As long as his children have been with him, he’s had problems with running into things. Often them. They know _why_ \- it can be hard to navigate when you’re suddenly seeing double- but it’s still entertaining when he trips over Gula and winds up rolling down a hill, or smacks into Aced and startles him. They get used to it easily, pulling him out of the path of danger, guiding him around lampposts and dips in the road.

And then he takes out his Eye.

It’s impossible to hide anything from them, so within a week every apprentice knows. Ava notices that his Keyblade has changed when he summons it thinking a crow is a small Heartless, but she doesn’t mention it to the others- and if they notice, they don’t mention it, either.

The kids collude, and they set to work. Ira donates an old training staff that Ava paints in curling stripes. Invi studies protective spells and practices enchanting stuffed animals for a week before setting her magic on it. Gula adds a keychain with a strap that easily winds around his wrist, and Aced reinforces it with a metal bar through the length of the middle and a deceptively small cap on the end that makes a soft clink noise when tapped against hard surfaces. Luxu disappears into his room with it for a week, and when he emerges the staff has a soft grip and a slight shimmer that insinuates he put something more than a simple spell on it.

They go together to meet their Master, and present him with their gift as one. Luxu demonstrates how to summon and unsummon it, a simpler version of how Keyblades work; Gula shows how the keychain sparkles and shines and quietly chimes when spun; Ava happily explains the paint is a sort that absorbs light and puts it off when there is little or none, Aced beams and speaks proudly of his craftsmanship, Invi shyly lists the spells she wove around it, and Ira smiles and says that he chose this staff because he knew it’d be the perfect length and size for the intended purpose.

Their Master weeps. A group hug and some dramatic wailing about having the best apprentices on the planet later, he tests the staff and finds it perfect for his needs. He uses it constantly for several months; as he grows accustomed to being a cyclops, he needs it less frequently, but he still keeps it at his fingertips like he does his ‘blade.

And if some nights he holds it in the darkness, allows the pale glow of its light to fill his room as a reminder of the good he must protect- well. No one would judge, if they knew what he knows.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Aqua always double-checks her reality.

Are shadows where they should be? Are Terra’s scars in their places, is Ven’s hair spiked the right way? Do the mirrors show the right reflections?

(Is she in them?)

It’s a habit built by thirteen years of war, by hallucination and illusion and death. Maybe she’ll be like that always.

\--Not that Aqua can put this in so many words. Things are just _better_ with Terra or Ven nearby, her precious family, the two people her heart knows the most. Things are better in the castle, of which she knows every room and corner the same way she knows the breadth of her own skin.

(It’s an unforeseen consequence from her desperation a decade before.

_“For this technique, you must touch the castle’s very heart,”_ the Master had said. _“The heart of this world is hidden in these walls, and that is a perilous thing which no person can command. But you are a Keyblade Master. Reach out and the world itself will listen. Reach out, Aqua, and let the light reach you.”_

And she did. Begged it for a place to protect Ven, when she and Terra couldn’t. Begged for a safe place for child and history to sleep, where their memories could hide untainted. A place that only Aqua could restore again.

Castle Oblivion was the answer. But to make Aqua the key, the castle’s very walls were engraved in Aqua’s heart.)

Terra, Ven, and home. As long as she has those three, nothing will ever lead her astray again. And if she’s subtle, no one notices how she’s familiar with even the most abandoned of the castle’s halls.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Riku can’t always see anything.

He can navigate just fine. Nobody who isn’t close to him would notice; his eyes still move, he still looks at whoever’s talking. He doesn’t trip over obstacles or walk into trees like Sora did when they were little, trying to prove he could navigate the island with his eyes closed.

But he can’t say what colors are, or read books or facial expressions. He can’t look at signs to know where he is or use electronics without someone to tell him what the screen is saying. And when he cooks, it’s because he memorized where everything is (and because he can heal any accidental burns before anyone notices).

It’s not always complete blindness. And Kairi and Sora always seem to know when the world vanishes into a dark haze, when he has to use his heart to know what’s around him rather than just looking.

Cureja and Curega and Elixirs and potions don’t do anything. So they go to Radiant Garden to get some help.

Aerith sits Riku down, sets Sora on the local Heartless population, sends Kairi off with some books about healing and anatomy and the mind, and talks to him.

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes,” she says. Riku can _feel_ his eyebrows tilting in disbelief, about to open his mouth when she pokes him gently in the forehead.

(He doesn’t flinch. He saw it coming, even though he can’t see.)

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes,” she says, “or with your heart. It’s your mind that’s wounded.”

“My… mind?”

Aerith’s voice is soft without being quiet. Matter-of-fact, not pitying, and Riku appreciates her bluntness.

“You have been through very much since you were very young, while your mind was still growing and forming itself. And while you have healed and persevered, it leaves marks that cannot be erased.”

“But how does that make me blind?”

A huff, more amused than anything, and the healer leans back.

“Your mind is trying to protect you. Like when you wore a blindfold- it tries to cut you off from danger. And in this case, it does so by blocking access to your eyes.”

“But that doesn’t actually _help._ ”

“Our minds can be illogical sometimes. Like our hearts.” It’s a vague impression, but Riku thinks she’s smiling. “It may clear in time, or it may not. It simply is.”

Riku doesn’t totally understand this, but. He kind of gets the general idea.

“So we can’t fix it?”

Aerith reaches out and smooths her fingers under Riku’s eyes, across his cheek.

“Just as silly as my boys,” she says. “No. There’s nothing to be fixed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> about Riku:  
> Yes, trauma can cut off access to your senses. Seryph experiences it with smell, which is hilariously inconvenient.  
> And as any therapist worth their salt will tell you, therapy isn't there to "fix" anything. Especially when major disorders are involved, the end goal is getting the client functional enough to live their life _with_ whatever conditions they have.


	11. beloved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> these are matters of the heart.

Having a Heartless boyfriend and a heartless boyfriend really cuts down on your date night options.

Riku’s stubborn stoicism to outsiders has earned him a reputation for being a little heartless, and Sora really _is_ a little Heartless. So to speak. One gets them disapproving looks from adults, the other gets them kicked out of movie theatres.

(Really, it shouldn’t be a big deal. So Sora wanted to run about a bit while they watched a movie? He stayed in the shadows, at least, it’s not like he was actually visible. Much. It wasn’t even a scary movie. Kairi’s seen more horrifying horror sequences in her dreams.)

Restaurants aren’t much of an option either. They just… don’t work. Neither do the little game places set up for tourists and bored Islanders. Sora steals golf balls and Riku accidentally throws a bowling ball so hard that it cracks the pins rather than just knocking them over and Kairi breaks a golf club over the head of a guy who tries to touch her butt.

Eventually they figure out that the best option is to set up their own entertainment in the Secret Place. It turns into a strange kind of dwelling, all sand and splintery shelves and weather-worn pillows and a DVD player carefully wrapped in plastic so it won’t be damaged when it storms.

They get a new reputation after that, the mysterious not-quite-ghosts that non-Islanders always think are just a local legend, and everyone says the Secret Place is haunted now. Sora is kind of smug about it. Kairi baps him over the head and tells Riku to stop hogging the blankets.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Some of the kids try to date each other, sometimes. Gula doesn’t really understand why.

...well. They’re the same age as him, mostly, with some as young as seven or eight and a few looking as old as Aced and Ira, which is _really_ old. If the ones that old were dating it might make sense.

But there’s two kids Gula’s age in his Union who say they’re dating, whatever that means. They hold hands and giggle a lot and do missions by themselves, even though that’s a little dangerous and Gula put out an announcement to _stay in groups so you don’t actually die out there, please and thank you._ There’s not much more than that he can do, short of following them on their little excursions, and that’s too close to babysitting for his taste.

He makes sure their Chirithies are keeping an eye out for trouble, and pretty much washes his hands of the whole thing. And ignores all the shy questions about if he and Ava are dating. Why would they do that?

Sometimes his Union just doesn’t make any sense.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

“Someone asked if we were dating,” Roxas says. “The three of us. I don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get?” Lea answers, busy rummaging through a crate of supplies. There’s nothing really tasty in it, just rations and potions and ethers and the kind of thing that travels well when you’re on the run between worlds.

“...I don’t know. _Are_ we dating?”

Lea turns just enough to give him a deadpan look, so much like Axel about to explain a weird concept or a mission gone wrong that for a moment Roxas forgets to breathe.

“Tell me something, Roxas” he says, and swings around to face him properly. “How old are you?”

Roxas pauses, shaken out of flashback by the sheer weirdness of the question.

“What? I’m-”

...and he stops. How old is he, exactly?

His silence seems to be the answer Lea is looking for. The redhead nods, still with that serious face.

“Exactly,” he says, and refuses to speak any more on the subject. Roxas takes that to mean that the answer is probably no.

He still makes fun of Lea for the rest of the day when he tries to get up and trips straight into the crate, though.

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Ava tries to set him up twice.

The Master laughs and waves her off when she asks him about his love life- ”I’ve got to focus on taking care of you kids, don’t I?” -but it doesn’t stop her like he thought it would. He starts noticing her dragging him to stalls in the market with people she thinks he’d fancy- usually cute ladies, but she drags him to every metalworker’s booth at a fair and watches hopefully as he awkwardly examines their crafts.

Later, he catches her and tries to explain himself again.

“Look, it’s not that you guys are a burden or anything- I just don’t want to date anyone right now.  I don’t have the time to dedicate to a partner, you guys are gearing up for some serious training, my C experiments are going well…”

She nods and smiles up at him, but the next night a kind woman who had offered to be a nanny before she knew the kids were wielders was sitting in the living room when he came down for dinner.

(He’s in his hooded pajamas because it’s the weekend. It's better that he's in them, though- nothing says ‘my child asked you over so i could kill you’ _less_ than baggy flannel patterned with cats.

He still gets a look for the hood, though.)

 

-♡-♡-♡-

 

Aqua and Terra get mistaken for a couple all the time.

Terra doesn’t much care, even if he uses it as an excuse to glare off handsy men who flirt and flirt and fail to hide the darkness in them. Other than that, it’s no issue- and it never has been. Maybe paradoxically, they’re too close to have a romantic relationship.

Aqua can take care of herself easily enough, but it saves everyone trouble to let Terra drive off the groping hands and leering eyes. It makes him feel better, makes him feel like he can actually protect his important people every once in awhile. She can’t really deny him that.

Neither of them are surprised at the assumptions, though. They’re intimate with each other in a way not often seen, treating each others bodies as extensions of their own. They can communicate with a look or a touch, when needed. They live together. They’re raising Ven together, if that’s even possible- Aqua knows that children of war grow up too quickly or not at all. No one knows which one Ven is yet.

 And yes, they’ve seen each other beneath their clothes and armor. Gummi ships don’t come equipped with showers, and neither do battlefields. Even if they had, the first time they ran out of mana and had to treat by hand each other's’ wounds- that would have cleared up any remaining prudishness rather fast. There’s no time to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at body parts when you’re trying not to die.

Ven is the same. He should be at that age where children start to be self-aware, start to concern themselves with modesty and covering up and what people's bodies are and aren’t- and really, it’s not that he lacks awareness or doesn’t know his body well enough.

He knows it all too well, but he hasn’t changed. It’s like he’s flown over puberty or just decided to pass on it altogether. Ven’s still short, entirely unconcerned if Aqua and Terra see him changing or in the bath, and entirely uninterested in the idea of living with or forming relationships with anyone else besides the people he already knows.

Ven’s very interested in Aqua’s relationships, though. He and Terra frequently conspire to set her up with the Princesses- with none of the subtlety she knows they’ve learned in the last few years. “Accidental” meetings in libraries and gardens, badly concealed tripwires for her to “fall” in someone’s arms, items that need delivering that somehow aren’t really needed at all.

Aqua insists that the setup is unnecessary, that the heart chooses for itself and so forth and so forth. Her boys respond with even more complicated plots, and pointedly plan their escapades right in front of her.

(If she takes advantage of some of them to talk shop with the other girls, or to trade books and dresses and magic with Cinderella while her boys are being silly- well. That’s Aqua’s business and nobody else’s. Even if Cinderella’s godmother has a tendency to make sly and pointed jokes about how she does hope they are both adequately _protected_ while they are alone together in the Castle of Dreams’ many rooms and halls _._ )

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy howdy romancey topics are hard to write...
> 
> Hooded cat pajamas, though. **_Hooded cat pajamas._**


End file.
